The Beat That My Heart Skipped review

French director Jacques Audiard’s intense and imaginative remake of the cult ’70s movie Fingers relocates the original’s New York Italian Mafia setting to a noirish Parisian milieu of crooked real estate deals.

Late twentysomething Tom (Romain Duris) is a man torn between two worlds: criminality and art. Following in his father’s footsteps, he uses violence and intimidation as tools of business. But he also dreams of imitating his late mother by becoming a classical pianist.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped offers a compelling blend of Oedipally charged thriller and deeply affecting character study, with Duris delivering a magnificent performance. Stylistically, Audiard is a little too claustrophobic in how he sticks tightly to the protagonist, but he expertly builds to a bloodied and surprisingly ambivalent climax.